San José State football (4-1, 2-0 MWC) relies on backup junior quarterback Walker Eget to secure a victory on Saturday beating the Nevada Wolf Pack (2-4, 0-1 MWC) 35-31.
Sophomore quarterback Emmett Brown threw for 170 yards, completed 12 of his 28 pass attempts and threw two touchdowns.
Brown averages two or more touchdowns every game this season, with a total of 15 touchdowns.
Despite Brown throwing two touchdowns he began to struggle during the second half with SJSU’s coaching staff substituting in Eget during the fourth-quarter.
Head coach Ken Niumatalolo described the moment he gave his coaching staff the nod to substitute Eget for Brown.
“I was just looking at coach (Craig Stutzman), and he was getting frustrated and he told Eget to get in there,” Niumatalolo said. “Sometimes in coaching there are all these calculated analytics, but here there weren’t any analytics.”
Eget threw for 141 yards as Brown’s backup and completed 10 of his 13 pass attempts with 0 touchdowns in the fourth-quarter.
During SJSU’s final drive Brown came back in and threw two incomplete passes, and Eget came back in to finish the drive resulting in an SJSU touchdown.
The game started strong offensively with both teams scoring their first drives of the game which gave proof that it was going to be a shootout game for Saturday night’s contest.
The Spartans didn’t take long to find their rhythm early with senior wide receiver Nick Nash as a big distraction for Nevada’s defense.
This caused junior running back Floyd Chalk IV to rush two touchdowns in the end of the first and third-quarter during situations in the red zone.
The Wolf Pack tied the game 21-21 at halftime, second-half possessions became more crucial throughout the fourth-quarter.
Nevada’s last offensive play of the game resulted in an interception by SJSU senior safety Robert Rahimi to seal the Spartans win.
Nash threw his second passing touchdown of the season with 50 seconds remaining in the fourth-quarter.
“I thought that we were going to be able to get a lot of pull from the defense with me motioning across,” Nash said.
Pro Football Focus has Nick Nash ranked as the third-best receiver in the country with a grade of 89.9, according to its web page.
“I don’t think a lot of it was on Emmett. It was just a team thing,” Eget said. “He fought his butt off, I tried to fight my butt off too, it’s a team sport most of those points were him so we can’t forget about that.”
There were plenty of defensive mistakes including penalties and lots of missed tackles, including a targeting call on SJSU senior defensive back Amir Wallace resulting in an ejection.
“We had a lot of missed tackles and we have to do a better job on wrapping up on defense,” junior defensive back DJ Harvey said. “When going up against a scrambling quarterback we have to contain them on the backend and we just have to do better.”
Following the win the Spartans are scheduled to play Colorado State on the road on Saturday Oct. 12 at 12:30 p.m. (PT) at Canvas Stadium in Fort Collins, Colorado.
“Some of our mistakes were self-inflicting wounds and we have to get back to the drawing board and get better,” said Niumatalolo. “The last two weeks we faced two great offenses but we got to shore that up a little bit this time.”
